Hello all,
Well I am back on track I think. And today I want to talk about the Swedish Mapsites that are available online.
First there is http://www.lantmateriet.se/. This is the official office for land surveys in Sweden. And you can short cut getting to the site by typing http://www.lm.se/ and it will bring up the site in just a few short key strokes. I like this site it offers a wide array of maps from all over Sweden. I go to the Historic maps link on the right column of the home page. I wouldn't bother with the standard search unless you know all the current legal names for the location you are looking for. If you go to advanced search, you select the archive you want the map from. There are useful maps under each catagory. The survey map group gives great maps about the land divisions and the changes in the land boundries. The Harad Economic maps are great for the time frame of 1850 to 1900. The maps are highly detailed and show relationships between communities. they are detailed enough that buildings are notated on the maps. Maps can be download. They will come as an electronic file 150 Kronor for each map regardless of the number of pages. But they come in a file format read by DjVu. So they need to be converted. I converted to a PDF file, then to a JPG and finally to a TIFF file. Above is a land survey map of Råby in the parish of Lysvik. It not only gives great detail about the division of land, but also gives a listing of the land holders and the acerage that they held. I find this website to be very useful. It can get extremely expensive if you are planning on downloading every community that your relatives lived in.
The next website is http://kartavdelningen.sub.su.se/kartrummet/default.htm. This website is from the University of Stockholm. Kartrumnet is the site name. When you get to the home page, I go directly to the map cabinet. Select the county you want to work in, the län, then the Harad. You will need to know the court district known as a Harad in Sweden. These are very easy to find in the Cradled in Sweden, by Carl Erik Johansson. Once you locate the Harad you will select the map, some regions are divided by north and south, east and west. These maps are wonderful for locating communities within the county regions. They give excellent detail even notating the location of houses, churches, bodies of water. And the best part is they can be downloaded for free. Not every county has a map in the Map Cabinet, but many are there and if you are a lucky on these are wonderful additions to your genealogy collection for Sweden. They can be downloaded in TIFF files, which are huge. My Photoshop Elements could not open because the files were too large. JPG downloads are also available and much more managable.
Well that is all for today. Happy hunting for your Swedish Ancestors.
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